The Dragonflame

Thoughts, stories and ideas.

09

Apr2015

Git 2.1.0 for Windows

It's been nearly a year since Git 2 hit stable and Windows users are still deprived of its benefits (which also makes it slightly difficult to switch between Linux and Windows for users that got accustomed with Git 2 behaviors described here.

Yet this is not unfixable as with msysgit there is a complete build environment that allows a Windows user to get at least Git 2.1.0 (Linux has gone way up to 2.3.5).

Clone (or get the zip) the repository at https://github.com/msysgit/git. Now, this is the initial Git 2.1.0 for Windows, cloned and developed from the actual git repository used to develop for Linux. I've tested the compilation on Windows 8 and works well. If you feel lucky, you should go to https://github.com/git-for-windows/git where you can get newer (but also less stable) versions.

In the folder resulted from fetching (or unzipping) msysgit/msysgit there is a folder call git. Overwrite the contents of that folder with the contents of the folder resulted from unzipping msysgit/git (or git-for-windows/git)

Double-click (or run from console) msys.bat

Once it is done (might take a while), in the git folder you will have a set of executables name starting with git. Copy git.exe over the one found in c:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin. You can ignore the rest (you might notice all have the same size), as in Windows git is a single exe file, not the set of tools we have on Linux (although git also comes with a set of Linux-like tools like find for Windows).

Now when you fire up git bash, you will still notice the old version displayed there, but if you run git --version in Git Bash, you will see it's 2.1.0 (or whichever version you compiled).

Enjoy! And hopefully there will be am official Windows installer soon!